“Excuse me!” she begged. “I had nearly said what must have given you reason to suppose that I have a disordered intellect! I believe that the shock of seeing you stretched lifeless upon the ground has a little overset my nerves.”
“You mean, do you not, that the finishing blow might have been dealt me while I lay senseless, had you not been at hand to frighten away my assailant?”
“I did mean that,” she confessed. “The misadventure you escaped at the bridge the other day must have been in my mind, perhaps.”
So you knew about that!”
“Everyone knows of it. One of the servants heard your cousin rating Martin for — for his carelessness in forgetting to warn you. You must know how quickly gossip will spread in a large household! But if it was indeed Martin who brought your horse down, I am persuaded he did not mean to kill you!”
“Just a boyish prank, Miss Morville?” Gervase said.
“It was very bad, of course, for he could not know that the accident would not prove to be fatal. When his temper is roused, there is no saying what he will do. He seems not to care — But I own this goes beyond anything I should have thought it possible for him to do! There is no understanding it, for he is by no means a genius, so that we cannot excuse him on the score of eccentricity.”
His head was aching, but he was obliged to smile. “Is it your experience that geniuses are apt to perform such violent deeds, ma’am?”
“Well, they frequently behave very irrationally,” she replied. “History, I believe, affords us many examples of peculiar conduct on the part of those whose intellects are of an elevated order; and within my own knowledge there is the sad case of poor Miss Mary Lamb, who murdered her mama, in a fit of aberration. Then, too, Miss Wollstonecraft, who was once a friend of my mother’s, cast herself into the Thames, and she,you know, had a most superior intellect.”
“Cast herself into the Thames!” echoed the Earl.